Thursday, June 17, 2010

The Door

I've gotten used to seeing the blog have colorful pictures. It's certainly a change from the drab black I chose for it, OH WELL. Well, let's keep the theme going:Bloop.

So, here's a little story that I wrote. Now, I'm very self-conscious about my creative output. About the only thing I care about more than whether it's good or not is if people will think I'm trying to be an obnoxious artist type by trying to make them read a story they don't want anything to do with. Well, I've asked a grand total of two people and they seem to think it's alright but then again it could always turn out that they were lying to me (I'm watching you IDontKnow and Ou812, you iconoclasts).

Well here it is:

The Door

"Here it is." Doctor Eliheiser said as he pointed to the huge machine. "You'll be the first person to go through." This wasn't the first time he or any of the other researchers said this to Jhoan and each time it carried the same gravity. He had seen the case footage over and over. Jhoan had been studying for this moment for over three years now, every scrap of data that was retrieved from the remote probes he memorized. He prepared in simulations, he customized his environmental suit for peak performance, he took with him an entire arsenal of scientific equipment to take samples, catalog and record, nothing would go unnoticed, nothing would go undiscovered.

"Ten minutes. No more." Eliheiser reminded Jhoan.

The machine looked absurd from the outside: A simple wood door, slightly worn with tarnished brass knobs and it's frame bolted into a lock that belonged in a bunker. A series of huge hydraulic pistons were riveted to the side and the frame was embedded in a much larger steel framework to create an airtight seal. The whole locking mechanism was part of a much larger concrete wall. It looked like a bank vault that could survive a nuclear blast with a flimsy door attached.

A sinking feeling hit his stomach as the pistons let out a steamy hiss. Every time they opened that door there was something different on the other side.

Eiliheiser hurried out of the room through the airlock as it sealed behind him. Jhoan was on his own now, there was no other way in or out of that room, even all the equipment was powered by a large generator in the corner, nothing to separate him from the door.

The pistons contracted and the door slowly swung open.

Everytime it opened it was something different but it was always a room. Always it was like the door to an ordinary room with ordinary furniture, even if the decorations were sometimes slightly antique. Jhoan wasn't afraid of something living coming out of the door, not once did the remote probes see anything moving on the other side.

But sometimes the rooms would be upside down, or full of water that would come gushing out when the pistons moved, ruining much of the early equipment. Once, the room on the other side was on fire when it opened. But still, not once did they see something living on the other side.

The door churned open, on the other side was total blackness.

He was confused for a minute. "Did the lights go out?" he thought. Jhoan took a cautious step towards the door. It was like there was nothing on the other side at all, as if someone had painted the other side of the wall black. Except, it wasn't just black. Jhoan got an eerie feeling, he suddenly remembered he was all alone.

It was a massive breech of proper procedure, but the test chamber had no cameras except the one Jhoan was holding. His colleagues on the other side of the door had no idea what was going on in that room.

Another step forward, he looked down at the indicators on his wrist band. Nothing unusual was happening, thankfully. There were several times in the past when remote probes would come out on fire, or inside out, or even, in one instance, bathed in deadly radiation, Jhoan was just happy it hadn't happened to him yet.

Another step forward, reluctantly, he stuck his hand through the door. There was nothing, just a black, yawning abyss.

Suddenly, the door broke off it's hinges. The entire steel framework moaned as it was torn to pieces. The abyss suddenly became a huge gaping mouth that swallowed Jhoan whole. He was already falling down an enormous gullet before he realized what had happened.

"Oh my god." He thought "There's something on the other side!"

"Not just something," The gullet said. "Us."

Just as suddenly as the mouth appeared, thousands of tiny cuttlefish drifted out of the fleshy walls of the tunnel. Effortlessly, they picked apart his environmental suit, leaving him in the uniform he had underneath.

Cold, hard, as if the tunnel had suddenly stopped. To his surprise, it had. Jhoan was laying on a tile floor now. He got up and saw that it looked like a giant checkerboard, black and white tiles as far as he could see in every direction. The floor met the night sky on the horizon.

"It's full of stars." he thought.

The floor started to crumble, one by one the tiles fell, revealing the same black abyss underneath. Jhoan tried to run away from the ever expanding hole. Without noticing, he ran into a desert.

"What is this place!?" he yelled at the sky. The sand around him began to rumble and several giant snakes burst out of the ground."Here comes the MONEY!" they said in unison. A giant temple rose from the ground underneath Jhoan. It continued to climb into the sky with him on top."I'm hallucinating." he thought. "I'll close my eyes and when I open them this will all go away."But no, Jhoan opened his eyes, and when he looked down he saw that the entire desert had turned into a sea of brightly coloured serpents. The temple he was standing on top of was, as they had said, made of money, loads of money.

Jhoan was only in the door for ten minutes but by the time he was spit back out he was covered in sand, his pockets were full of minerals that had yet to be named by Human science and all his equipment was lost. On top of that, it took a whole week to get him to start talking again. Before that he would just babble.

"Like what?" asked the man in a suit.

"Weird stuff, things about non-euclidean space, doors," the man took a sip from the glass of brandy. "And serpents."

"And the project?" asked the be-suited man.

"Scrapped, they got rid of everything. Not that it mattered, all the instruments were trashed, the only thing they found after the airlock opened was this poor sap lying on the floor and the machine, which was twisted like some kind of avant-garde sculpture. Plus, the door was smashed into splinters."

The man in the suit was silent for a long time, contemplating what he had been told. "What are we dealing with here?" he asked after a drawn out breath.

"I don't really know anymore, it's been classified. Besides, all the people involved are facing court-marshal now. It was vagrant violation of procedure."

"Everyone except Jhoan." said the man in the suit. The other nodded from behind the glass of brandy. His face quivered at the taste then turned to speak. "Another committee has been formed to deal with him."